Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-290395 describes an example of a catheter that is generally housed in a holder tube wound in a circular manner such that an unhoused portion (a connector and a portion of a sheath) is exposed from the holder tube.
Other ways of packaging involves storing the whole catheter together with the holder tube in a bag by fixing them on a mat board, setting the whole catheter together with the holder tube on a tray and storing the catheter in a bag by fastening one place of the unhoused portion onto the holder tube.
However, a method that involves using a mat board or a tray, because the whole catheter is received on the mat board or in the tray, it is necessary to provide a mat board or a tray conforming in size to the entire catheter. The capacity of the member used for the package is thus relatively large and liable to be bulky as compared with a packaging method involving fastening one place of the unhoused portion onto the holder tube. On the other hand, with the packaging method involving fastening the unhoused portion onto the holder tube, the unhoused portion is held only in one place, so that it is difficult to hold the unhoused portion stably as compared with using a mat board or a tray. In particular, for a highly functionalized catheter, the proximal portion of the catheter is heavy due to the fact that the highly functionalized catheter includes structure such as an electrical connection portion. There thus exists the possibility that the catheter may be relatively easily broken due to the presence of, for example, the structure in which a signal path of an optical fiber or the like passes, and it is difficult to package such a highly functionalized catheter by fastening one place of the unhoused portion onto the holder tube.